I just want to start of by saying that I’m not trying to defend the change, criticise the change or put down anyone else’s opinions on the matter. This is just something that occurred to me while looking at the new design for the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn.
For those of you who have been fans for a long time, you may be aware of this already. For others I will give a brief rundown. In Halo CE (and by extension CEA), there were two levels featured on the sole human ship, the Pillar of Autumn. The final level, called the Maw, featured the famous Warthog run. It also introduced us to one of our first inconsistencies in the series. Canonically, the Pillar of Autumn is 1,171 metres long (that’s 1.17 km), and 352 metres wide. For those of you not familiar with metric units, that’s just shy of 3,842 ft long and 1,155 ft wide. The warthog run goes for 3 km. They did this for gameplay reasons. Now 3 km is more than double the length of the Autumn, the real kicker hear is that the Chief is supposed to be driving across the width of the vessel. In the Maw the ship was shown to be more than 8 times as wide as it is canonically.
What does this have to do with Halo 4 and the FUD. Well simply put, I think they redesigned it for gameplay reasons. The FUD is a Charon-class frigate. These ships are 490 meters (1,600 ft) long and 156 meters (510 ft) wide. That’s substantially smaller than the Autumn was. If you look at the sizes and the design of the Charon-class, it doesn’t really lend itself to satisfying level design. I think 343 knew this and as such, designed the layout for the first level, and built a ship around it. They likely knew there would be this backlash but decided to grit their teeth and bare it.
I know it looks very different, and this is all speculation, but I think they simply wanted an engaging level that wasn’t extremely short. They kept a few of the aesthetic elements and I don’t think they’re trying to throw the canon out the window. I think they’re just trying to make gameplay and canon work together as best as they can.
Feel free to disagree or what have you. This is just my take one things.
You also have to realize that you’re not driving from end of the ship to end of the ship, and at two different times, the track on the MAW run double backs and goes the other direction. The first time it double backs to the left, and then the second time (right next to the ‘shortcut’ tube by the ‘food -Yoink!-’ grunt)it doubles back to straighten itself back out. So it’s basically impossible to form any kind of solid measurement… just saying.
> You also have to realize that you’re not driving from end of the ship to end of the ship, and at two different times, the track on the MAW run double backs and goes the other direction. The first time it double backs to the left, and then the second time (right next to the ‘shortcut’ tube by the ‘food -Yoink!-’ grunt)it doubles back to straighten itself back out. So it’s basically impossible to form any kind of solid measurement… just saying.
Actually, it has been worked out by a number of people. The twists and turns barely change it and when put next to Autumn, it’s still longer. Considering you’re meant to be driving across the width, that’s an even greater inconsistency.
I always liked to think that the ship landed on a Forerunner “base” or “non-natural” tunnels that you spend your time driving through and that they stored the ships there for safe keeping. Would explain why there’s a canyon with only a small bridge attached between them.
It’s not size that bothers me, its just how different it looks. What I have heard someone say is that maybe cortana could have used drones to repair the ship or something, I’d rather them come up with something like that than just change it so drastically purely for gameplay reasons, If they made the ship bigger, but looked the same, I would be ok with that.
> It’s not size that bothers me, its just how different it looks. What I have heard someone say is that maybe cortana could have used drones to repair the ship or something, I’d rather them come up with something like that than just change it so drastically purely for gameplay reasons, If they made the ship bigger, but looked the same, I would be ok with that.
The whole design didn’t really lend itself to much. On the plus side, we still have the Paris-class and Stalwart-class which have almost identical designs.